"They were out in challenging conditions looking for a needle in a haystack, and they found it," Washington Governor Chris Gregoire said in a statement, reports NBC News.

The object appears similar to a dock that turned up in Oregon in June. The 165 tons of concrete and steel, measuring 66 feet long, 19 feet wide and 7 feet high floated ashore on Agate Beach, a mile north of Newport, in Oregon.

Now that the dock has been found, the main concern is invasive species.

Volunteers scrubbed and sterilized the Oregon dock found this summer in an attempt to stop the possible spread of the hundreds of millions of individual organisms, including a tiny species of crab, a species of algae, and a little starfish all native to Japan that made the 5,000 mile trip, according to the Associated Press.

John Chapman, a research scientist at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center, said about the Oregon dock, "This is a very clear threat." He told AP, "It's incredibly difficult to predict what will happen next."